Lionheart
by starfishstar
Summary: Tonks finds an old favourite book; Remus hasn't heard of it.


**Notes: **Written for the _rt_morelove "Stocking Filler Exchange," for huldrejenta's prompt (see below) from "The Brothers Lionheart" by Astrid Lindgren.

Also, I deliberately haven't pinned this to any specific time period, but in my head I think it's very shortly after they're married – perhaps while sorting through possessions in preparation for moving in together.

_. . . . ._

_Jonatan: You know I can't kill another man._  
_Orvar: Oh Jonatan, if everyone thought like you, Evil would have prevailed a long time ago. _  
_Skorpan: If everyone thought like Jonatan there wouldn't be no evil._  
From _Brothers Lionheart_ by Astrid Lindgren

. . . . .

"This!" Tonks said, flinging up a triumphant arm from where she'd draped herself along the juncture of floor and wall, one hand fishing around behind the furniture. "Behind the bookshelf all along. Of course." She sat up and waved aloft a tattered, well-loved Muggle paperback book. "I've been trying to find this book to show you, because it reminds me of you. Or you remind me of it. Whichever."

Remus leaned down and took the proffered paperback. _The Brothers Lionheart_, he read as he straightened up again, _by Astrid Lindgren._

"Here," Tonks said, scrambling up from the floor and catching herself against Remus' arm as she overbalanced. She leaned her chin in over his shoulder and snaked an arm around his elbow so she could flip through the pages of the book. "That bit there," she said. "Where they talk about Jonatan."

She gave him a few seconds to read where she was pointing, then turned to him, digging her chin into his shoulder. "That's kind of how I think about you. If everyone were like you… Well, I'd be out of a job for one thing."

Remus frowned. "Dora, this heroic image that you have of me… That's not who I am. I am not some innately good person. If I seem 'good' to you, it's simply because I've had to work so hard to counteract the darkness."

Tonks frowned right back and poked him again with her chin. "Well, yeah, that's kind of what I said. Except you said it more eloquently, obviously. If everyone worked as _hard_ as you do at doing the right thing… I guess I can't say for sure there 'wouldn't be no evil,' but things would be a lot nicer, at least." She grinned suddenly. "Everyone would say please and thank you and know how to make a proper cup of tea and they would all fold their clothes very neatly each night before they went to bed…"

The response to that was an eye-roll, or at least as close as Remus Lupin ever came to rolling his eyes. "You're really not going to let that one go, are you?" he complained.

"Never," Tonks agreed happily.

In one deft motion, Remus swung her around so they were chest to chest, his hand that still held the book pressing into the small of her back.

"What about you?" he asked, tone serious again. "Can you honestly tell me you read a passage like that and don't see yourself reflected back?"

"Me?" Tonks scrunched up her nose. "Hello, I'm an _Auror_. I basically attack people for a living."

Remus leaned back enough to give her the full weight of his Sceptical Look. "Seriously? That's the line of argument you're going to take?"

"Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. Slightly. But we're not exactly sunshine-and-unicorn folks, you know." She snorted. "That's the Centaur Liaison Office, actually. They've still never lived down that decade in the 1500s when unicorns got accidentally lumped in with centaurs…"

"Back to my original _point_," Remus said, though he was smiling.

"What, that I'm more upstanding than you?"

"Precisely. You chose to be an Auror because you care so deeply about justice that you would put yourself in danger's path every day for its sake."

"How do you know I didn't become an Auror for the power and glory of it?"

He smiled. "Because I know you too well."

She laughed. "And are _you_ ever going to stop using that as your all-purpose trump argument?"

"Never."

The two of them shared a contented smile.

Then Remus said, "Believe me, it's more than flattering to see myself through your eyes. But I wouldn't want you to have illusions about me."

"Illusions? Come on, just yesterday, I seem to recall, you were calling me 'frighteningly sensible' or some such nonsense. And then you've got your whole bit about how you trust my judgement because I've got my feet 'so firmly planted on the ground' or whatever…"

Remus sighed. "Your prodigious memory does come back to bite me at the most inconvenient of times, doesn't it?"

"Let's agree to disagree," Tonks proposed. "Maybe you think more people should be like me, but I definitely think more people should be like you. If more people thought like you, Remus Lupin, it would be awfully hard for evil to prevail."

Remus gave a slight but involuntary shudder at those last words. _Evil to prevail_. Tonks squeezed him closer.

"Oh, stop it," she said. "Don't think like that. I know we're in the middle of a war with an awful lot of concrete examples of evil around us right now, but it _won't_ prevail. Not in the end. And in the end, anyway, we all get to Nangijala."

"We…sorry, what?"

"Seriously, I can't believe you've never read this. How have you not read this?"

Remus unwrapped his arm from behind Tonks' back and brought the paperback to rest between them, above her heart. "You clearly love this book."

"Yes."

"I'll bet your parents read it aloud to you when you were small."

"Yeah."

"What do you say we read it together? Maybe a bit every evening?"

When Tonks looked up from the book to Remus, her eyes were shining. "Ooh, yes, let's!" She gave him another grin. "Remus, you know, you may not be the type to kill a man, but you sure do know how to steal a woman's heart."


End file.
